How to write, talk and communicate with your donors

Ask yourself this. What type of communications is really driving your fundraising? Because if you’re serious about raising funds – as opposed to raising awareness or educating people – then you need to be incorporating tried and tested direct response techniques into your appeals. ...

I am utterly swamped with tax appeal work currently but when the mail came in today, I took a quick look to see if anything stood out. The image above shows the pile of envelopes I received today... and at the bottom are the envelopes that caught my eye. Those are the ones I immediately opened. ...

Following on from my post about donor complaints, I promised some positive ways to deal with donor complaints.

Because it's always unpleasant having to deal with a donor who is unhappy.

But first, I should point out there are some complainers who are actually loony. For example, they think some key person associated with your organisation is a member of the Illuminati. Yes, truly, I have heard of this.

Or they have an agenda and the mail you sent them somehow set them off on a rant. I could give examples but am a little concerned that it ...

Would you change your fundraising based on 8 complaints? It seems like a lot when you’re the person who’s copping the angry donors… but in the case of my client, it was 8 complaints out of 42,000 people mailed. That’s 0.019%. ...

How often do we draw conflicting conclusions from donor data? Also, how often do we try to rely on data and facts (the head) rather than narratives and emotions (the heart and gut) to motivate donors to take action?

As Jason says in the article I linked to above, "assuming that data can tell its own story ignores something fundamental that we know about how communications between humans works. People aren’t motivated by facts; they are motivated by narratives, by stories."

As of the time of writing, the outcome of certain seats in the Australian Federal election is still uncertain. Although it appears Turnbull will be able to form some kind of functioning government, whether he can achieve what he wants is also uncertain.